Algonquin Indian Tales

CHAPTER I.

The Children Carried Off by the Indians—­The Feast in
the Wigwam—­Souwanas, the Story-teller—­Nanahboozhoo,
the Indian Myth—­How the Wolves Stole His Dinner, and
Why the Birch Tree Bark is Scarred—­Why the Raccoon
has Rings on His Tail.

Without even knocking at the door there noiselessly
entered our northern home two large, unhandsome Indians.
They paid not the slightest attention to the grown-up
palefaces present, but in their ghostly way marched
across the room to the corner where the two little
children were playing on the floor. Quickly but
gently picking them up they swung them to their shoulders,
and then, without a word of salutation or even a glance
at the parents, they noiselessly passed out of that
narrow door and disappeared in the virgin forest.
They were pagan Saulteaux, by name Souwanas and Jakoos.

The Indian names by which these two children were
called by the natives were “Sagastaookemou,”
which means the “Sunrise Gentleman,” and
“Minnehaha,” “Laughing Waters.”

To the wigwam of Souwanas, “South Wind,”
these children were being carried. They had no
fear of these big Indians, though the boy was only
six years old, and his little sister but four.
They had learned to look with laughing eyes even into
the fiercest and ugliest of these red faces and had
made them their friends.